Material handlers or dumpers are used in a wide variety of industrial applications to enable efficient sorting, organization, and transportation of large volumes of bulky materials. Material handlers automatically elevate and dump such materials, allowing products to flow from containers at controlled rates to predetermined locations. For example, material handlers are used in the automobile manufacturing process to assist employees in sorting and organizing parts, and in postal applications for delivering mail from large containers onto conveyers for sorting.
Depending on the intended application, the handler may be designed in a variety of shapes and sizes for handling either solids or liquids. In addition, a handler may be designed as either a stationary or mobile unit. One particular feature of a handler which is important in many applications, however, is the container dump height variation. The term "dump height variation" refers to the change in vertical height of the lip of the container when the container is moved by the handler from a horizontal position to a "full dump position". It is well understood that container dump height variation directly affects the controllability of a dumping operation. In handlers that produce large container dump height variations, the dumping process is difficult for an operator to control, and materials tend to flow out of the container in uneven amounts in the dumping cycle. Thus, a goal in the design of material handlers is to minimize container dump height variation.
Compactness of motion of the container is another important feature of a material handler. The height and space available to operate the handler is usually limited. Thus, a material handler preferably has a compact motion resulting in efficient use of industrial space and improved controllability.
To date, prior art material handlers have failed to fully minimize dump height variation and container motion in a simple and cost-effective design.